Improvement in line orientation discrimination is retinally local but dependent on cognitive set

The ability of human observers to discriminate the orientation of a pair of straight lines differing by 3° improved with practice. The improvement did not transfer across hemifield or across quadrants within the same hemifield. The practice effect occurred whether or not observers were given feedback. However, orientation discrimination did not improve when observers attended to brightness rather than orientation of the lines. This suggests that cognitive set affects tuning in retinally local orientation channels (perhaps by guiding some form of unsupervised learning mechanism) and that retinotopic feature extraction may not be wholly preattentive.

[1]  R. Thouless.  Experimental Psychology , 1939, Nature.

[2]  G. Kimble,et al.  The relationship between two kinds of inhibition and the amount of practice. , 1952, Journal of experimental psychology.

[3]  T. Marill.  Detection theory and psychophysics , 1956 .

[4]  B. J. Winer.  Statistical Principles in Experimental Design , 1992 .

[5]  D. Hubel,et al.  Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional architecture in the cat's visual cortex , 1962, The Journal of physiology.

[6]  D. M. Green,et al.  Signal detection theory and psychophysics , 1966 .

[7]  C Blakemore,et al.  On the existence of neurones in the human visual system selectively sensitive to the orientation and size of retinal images , 1969, The Journal of physiology.

[8]  G. F. Cooper,et al.  Development of the Brain depends on the Visual Environment , 1970, Nature.

[9]  W. R. Garner.  The Processing of Information and Structure , 1974 .

[10]  S. McKee,et al.  Improvement in vernier acuity with practice , 1978, Perception & psychophysics.

[11]  A. Treisman,et al.  A feature-integration theory of attention , 1980, Cognitive Psychology.

[12]  A. Fiorentini,et al.  Learning in grating waveform discrimination: Specificity for orientation and spatial frequency , 1981, Vision Research.

[13]  John H. R. Maunsell,et al.  Hierarchical organization and functional streams in the visual cortex , 1983, Trends in Neurosciences.

[14]  G. Orban,et al.  The effect of practice on the oblique effect in line orientation judgments , 1985, Vision Research.

[15]  David Zipser,et al.  Feature Discovery by Competive Learning , 1986, Cogn. Sci..

[16]  L. Kaufman,et al.  Handbook of perception and human performance , 1986 .

[17]  Anne Treisman,et al.  Properties, Parts, and Objects , 1986 .

[18]  M. R. Houck,et al.  Conjunction of color and form without attention: evidence from an orientation-contingent color aftereffect. , 1986, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[19]  R. Sekuler,et al.  Direction-specific improvement in motion discrimination , 1987, Vision Research.

[20]  A Treisman,et al.  Feature analysis in early vision: evidence from search asymmetries. , 1988, Psychological review.

[21]  Donald C. Hood,et al.  THE CONTROL OF VISUAL SENSITIVITY , 1990 .

[22]  J. L. Schnapf,et al.  5 – THE CONTROL OF VISUAL SENSITIVITY: Receptoral and Postreceptoral Processes , 1990 .

[23]  D Sagi,et al.  Where practice makes perfect in texture discrimination: evidence for primary visual cortex plasticity. , 1991, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[24]  G. Westheimer,et al.  The effect of training on visual alignment discrimination and grating resolution , 1991, Perception & psychophysics.